THE GOSPEL OF VENEDIKT EROFEEV AND THE BIBLICAL RHETORIC

Abstract

This paper analyzes one of the earliest works by Venedikt Erofeev — the tale Blagaja vest’ (The Good news, 1962). This early and unfinished work, which vanished sometime after being read by a small group of Erofeev’s acquaintances and which has only partially survived, relies on the Bible as its most significant intertext, both on an aesthetic and linguistic level: Erofeev uses not only biblical allusions, motifs, references or quotations but also stylistic and rhetorical devices, typically employed by biblical authors. The aim of this article is to explore how and why Erofeev employs these strategies. The purpose is to apply to such a postmodern text a method known as rhetorical analysis. Particular attention is devoted to the essential characteristics of biblical rhetoric (binarity and parataxis) and to compositional figures, such as parallelism and chiasmus. Intertextual and intratextual relations and linguistic or stylistic phenomena will be considered as well. The analysis will note that the composition of Erofeev’s work clearly obeys the same principles of biblical rhetoric. Nevertheless in Blagaja vest’ these formal devises are used in an unexpected and unusual way. The author of this paper also emphasizes the important role that Blagaja vest’ plays in Erofeev’s entire œuvre: although it is an early work, it already prefigures the major qualities of Erofeev’s unique prose.